$40M to $130M: Piedmont's Sales Transformation with xPotential

Maintenance sales is a demanding job at Piedmont. Reps spend their early years prospecting for service agreements, and those agreements often lead to repair, project, and controls work elsewhere in the company. The role matters far beyond its own sales number, but for years it was also one of the hardest roles to keep staffed.

Piedmont had worked with Barrett Riddleberger since 2005 and returned to xPotential's assessments after briefly trying an in-house approach. In 2016, the relationship expanded into a sales program built specifically for Piedmont's maintenance team and the managers who coach it.

What changed

• Average maintenance rep tenure increased from about two years to more than four, with many reps now staying six or seven years.
• The team beat its maintenance sales plan four years running: 127% in 2021, 140% in 2022, 124% in 2023, and 152% in 2024.
• Top sellers moved from roughly $200,000 in annual new business to $600,000-$700,000, with some reaching $1 million.
• Piedmont's total revenue grew from about $40 million in 2016 to roughly $125-$130 million in 2025.

You took the time to know our company and culture so well that making a hiring decision without your input now feels foolish.

The two-year turnover problem

Maintenance reps often left at about the two-year mark. That timing was especially painful because year three is usually when the job starts to change. A rep has more relationships, warmer opportunities, and a base of existing activity instead of relying almost entirely on cold outreach. Piedmont was doing the hard work of getting people started, then losing them before that work paid off.

Performance was uneven, too. The maintenance team was finishing at about 80% of plan, and general sales coaching did not always fit the way these reps actually worked.

We needed to get back to Barrett. His assessments work for us.

Hiring for the role Piedmont actually had

xPotential assessed candidates and employees against the demands of maintenance sales, looking at personality, motivation, and cognition. Keith Summey and his team used the results for both hiring and internal promotions. The goal was practical: understand how a person was likely to approach the work before placing them in the role.

I won't even consider approving a new hire or a manager if they haven't gone through your assessment.

A sales process simple enough to use

Barrett worked with Piedmont's leadership to organize the job into four buckets: contacts, first appointments, proposals, and closings. That gave reps a clear way to see where an opportunity stood and helped managers coach the part of the process that was actually getting stuck. The training put particular attention on first calls and qualification, two areas that were holding the team back.

General managers and maintenance sales leaders learned the same system, so a rep heard consistent expectations from training through weekly coaching. Piedmont still uses the program today.

We trained sales coaches and managers to understand the process and hold reps accountable to it.

Reps stayed long enough to hit their stride

Average tenure in maintenance sales doubled from about two years to more than four. Many reps have now been in the job for six or seven years. That means more of them make it through the cold-prospecting years and into the period when relationships and referrals begin to create warmer opportunities.

The retention improvement also created a better problem for Piedmont: some strong performers began looking for more responsibility because they had grown as far as the existing role would take them.

For maintenance sales - our hardest role - doubling tenure is huge.

Higher quotas, stronger results

Before the program, Piedmont's maintenance team was at roughly 80% of plan. The company has raised the quota each year, but the team has continued to beat it:

• 2021: 127%
• 2022: 140%
• 2023: 124%
• 2024: 152%

We've been increasing quota every single year - and they're beating it every single year now.

Individual production rose along with the team numbers. A $200,000 year once counted as exceptional. Piedmont's top sellers now produce $600,000-$700,000 in new business, and some reach $1 million.

The effect beyond maintenance sales

A maintenance agreement often opens the door to repair and project work, so Keith sees the team's improvement as an important part of Piedmont's broader growth. Company revenue increased from about $40 million in 2016 to roughly $125-$130 million in 2025. Many factors contribute to growth at that scale, but maintenance sales has remained a reliable entry point for work across the business.

Everything feeds off that maintenance sale… it's taken us to another level.

We still use the program you built. It works.